Richard Hudson Bryan (born July 16, 1937) is an American retired politician and attorney who served as the 25th Governor of Nevada from 1983 to 1989 and as a United States Senator representing

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

from 1989 until 2001. A Democrat, Bryan previously served as the state's attorney general and a member of the State Senate.

Early life

Bryan was born in Washington, D.C., and graduated from the University of Nevada at Reno in 1959 where he was a member of Alpha Tau Omega and the president of ASUN. He earned his J.D. degree from the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

, Hastings College of the Law. In 1963 he was admitted to the Nevada Bar. He was Clark County's first public defender.

Political career

Bryan served as a member of the Nevada Senate from 1972 to 1978. In 1979, Bryan became the Nevada Attorney General, and served in the position until 1983.

Governor of Nevada

In 1982, Bryan challenged incumbent Republican Nevada Governor Robert List, who was running for reelection. He defeated List and became governor in January 1983. Bryan was easily reelected in 1986, defeating Nevada State Treasurer Patricia Cafferata. He became known for his frequent invitations to state legislators to join the governor for meals at the governor’s mansion. The practice created goodwill between the governor and legislators of both parties.

U.S. Senate

By 1987, Bryan was encouraged by several prominent politicians, including Harry Reid and

Alan Cranston Alan MacGregor Cranston (June 19, 1914 – December 31, 2000) was an American politician and journalist who served as a United States Senate, United States Senator from California from 1969 to 1993, and as President of the Citizens for Global S ...

, to run for the U.S. Senate. He declared his candidacy shortly after, and in the 1988 U.S. Senate election, he defeated incumbent Republican Senator Chic Hecht. He was sworn in at the convening of the 101st Congress on January 3, 1989. During his tenure in the Senate, Bryan served on the

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Banking A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital m ...

Intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

and

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Committees. Bryan was an opponent of Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), stating: "As of today millions have been spent and we have yet to bag a single little green fellow. Not a single Martian has said take me to your leader, and not a single flying saucer has applied for FAA approval." He introduced an amendment to the 1994 budget that secured the cancellation of the High Resolution Microwave Survey and terminated NASA's SETI efforts less than one year after their launch. Bryan ran for reelection in the Senate in

1994 The year 1994 was designated as the " International Year of the Family" and the "International Year of Sport and the Olympic Ideal" by the United Nations. In the Line Islands and Phoenix Islands of Kiribati, 1994 had only 364 days, omitti ...

, easily defeating Republican challenger Hal Furman. Bryan also focused on preventing Yucca Mountain from being used as a nuclear waste long-term storage site. Though the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository would be built during Bryan's time in the Senate, his opposition, delayed any actual storage from occurring. This opposition would continue after Bryan had retired before plans for storage were discontinued by President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

. Bryan opted not to run for a third term in the Senate in 2000.Bryan Not to Seek Re-election
Washington Post, 19/02/99, Retrieved 12/04/18

References

External links

*
A Guide to the U.S. Senatorial Papers of Richard H. Bryan
Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Reno.

Richard H Bryan's current professional page
* , - , - , - , - , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Bryan, Richard 1937 births Living people 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century Nevada politicians Democratic Party Nevada state senators Democratic Party United States senators from Nevada Democratic Party governors of Nevada Lawyers from Washington, D.C. Members of Congress who became lobbyists Nevada attorneys general Nevada Democrats Politicians from Carson City, Nevada Politicians from Las Vegas Public defenders Search for extraterrestrial intelligence University of California College of the Law, San Francisco alumni University of Nevada, Reno alumni 21st-century United States senators 20th-century United States senators 20th-century members of the Nevada Legislature